We have approached tomato jungle status. This picture is two weeks old – we’ve since pulled the zucchini plants up and the tomato plants are now officially taller than I am. And – best of all – they’re actually starting to ripen their fruit without birds eating it all. We planted super early so we’d have tomatoes in July and here it is the end of August and nothing. Well, close to nothing. I harvested a basketful this morning, though. I have grand plans for dinner tonight. BLT’s, baby.
And I started our fall crops – lettuces, kale, and a replant of some cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage starts. I planted the first round last week, but I think it was just too hot for them.
This year has been a learning experience for me. I now more about insects after this summer than I’d ever learned in my previous 30-some years (hello there, pretty white moth – corn earworm, what?). I know all kinds of vegetable diseases (early blight, powdery mildew) and what you can prevent and what you can’t.
We’ve also learned a bit more about what we want to plant next year and how to go about it. Tomatoes and squash need to be farther apart. We left three feet, but could have left five and still needed more room. We don’t like black beauty eggplant. I’m still going to try some fingerling eggplant varieties next year, though. No sense planting carrots – while fun to see them grow and pull them up from the dirt, no one here ate them, either.
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